Developmental Biology
Multicellular organisms develop as a result of repeated rounds of cell division of a fertilized egg. Over time, its descendant cells differentiate and exhibit specific rates of division and apoptosis. This balance between cell division, differentiation and death shapes the population sizes of the different cell types observable in single-cell RNA sequencing studies.
We are interested in quantifying these cell population processes using single-cell lineage tracing data, to understand how their interplay shapes the development of different model organisms (see external page Stadler, Pybus and Stumpf, Science, 2021). We develop phylogenetic methods that take into account the specificities of different lineage tracing systems and apply them to datasets from zebrafish and organoids in collaboration with Barbara Treutlein’s group.